The invention relates to guard plates for preventing forced entry into an automobile, and more particularly to guard plates which can be placed between a handle and an outer surface of the door panel of certain automobiles which are easily broken into by forcing a screwdriver between the door panel and the handle to trip a locking mechanism, particularly certain Volkswagen, Porsche, and certain Audi automobiles.
The Volkswagen Rabbit is notoriously easy for thieves to break into. Within the first year of owning my Volkswagen Rabbit, it was broken into six times. In the course of trying to determine if there was a way of making my Volkswagen Rabbit more theft-proof, I discovered that a large number of the Volkswagen Rabbits that I see parked on the street have been broken into in the same manner as mine. Such vehicles are easy to notice because of visible damage done to them, as indicated in FIG. 1. The technique for breaking into them simply involves forcing the flat blade of a screwdriver shaft 5 between the upper edge 4 of the door handle mechanism 1 and the outer surface of the door panel 2. By suitably manipulating the handle 6 of the screwdriver, a thief can easily force the flat blade downward and inward into the door, producing visible bending and damage 7 to the door panel 2. After the screwdriver shaft 5 has been inserted a certain distance (approximately 2 inches), the handle 6 is then pried outward, away from the door, and a portion of the blade extending inside the door through the bent metal 7 trips the door locking mechanism, unlocking the door. The would-be thief then simply opens the door in the usual manner and proceeds to remove the automobile's stereo system or whatever other valuable items he desires.
This problem has been a great source of frustration to me and, I have found, to many other owners of Volkswagen Rabbits. Although there is quite a lot of prior art on providing guard plates and other techniques for preventing forced entry into a wide variety of locked doors in buildings and in vehicles, as indicated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,212,176; 4,132,092; 3,083,563; 3,041,741; 3,606,429; 4,074,552; 3,976,318; and 4,397,168, I was unable to find any device that would make the door locks of my Volkswagen Rabbit more theft-proof.
It is very clear that there is an unmet need for a simple, economical device that will make it much more difficult to force entry into Volkswagen Rabbits and other such vehicles that are easily broken into.